What does it feel like to be adopted? Check out these voices of the adoptees themselves. A fantastic Minnesota story by American Radio Works from 2007 featuring siblings Chris and Amanda in Wanted: Parents. The story is here, the audio is here (transcript of the audio is here).Roger's story for Wanted: Parents - A Place [...]
Online social networking sites allow youth in foster care and adoption to connect with others who have shared their experiences. However negotiating social relationships - online ones included - can still be tricky. Youth can can be at risk, and for foster and adopted youth, issues such as who to trust, what to share, and [...]
Today we are bringing you family perspectives. From the National Resource Center for Permanency and Family Connections, their series Digital Stories from the Field includes foster/adoptive family perspectives. These eleven videos provide a variety of experiences of families that have adopted children and youth from foster care. A diverse group of perspectives are included: LGBT [...]
Social media can be a tool for promoting adoption and it can also be tricky to manage. Adoption agencies might fear using social media because of concerns for privacy issues and unfamiliarity with the social media tools. However, social media is being used more and more by adoptive parents and children and youth, so it [...]
During the celebrations and hoopla that National Adoption Month brings, it can be easy to forget or dismiss the reality that adoption is not always the fairy tale ending to a child's life. A child brings with him or her a lifetime of pre-adoption history that is often very difficult and filled with trauma. Trauma [...]
Today's National Adoption Month post is aimed at foster youth. Although adoption is often presented as being about the best interests of the child, in reality the child or youth in foster care has very little say or input about their own permanency planning. Social workers, Guardian ad litems or CASA workers, judges and foster [...]
On Sunday, November 4th over 400 families participated in the Circus of the Heart, a joint effort of the MN Department of Human Services and the Minnesota Adoption Resource Network. According to the Star Tribune, the event was created to celebrate the adoption of 540 children from foster care in 2011. Commissioner Lucinda Jesson opened [...]
It's National Adoption Month time again. Since President Clinton expanded National Adoption Week to National Adoption Month in 1995, National Adoption Month has been an effort to bring attention to the children and youth in foster care in need of adoption. Throughout this month we will be highlighting stories about foster care adoption and bring [...]